UNITE Predoctoral Research Enhancement Program

Mentor: Barbara Nikolajczyk, PhD

Dr. Yolander Valentine graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University with her Doctor of Philosophy in Clinical and Translational Science in 2023. After graduation, she became a Postdoctoral Research fellow at the University of Kentucky. She also has been selected as a Scientist Mentoring and Diversity Program for Biotechnology (SMDP Biotech) for the 2024-2025 school year.

Mentors: Shemeka Thorpe, phd and Christal Badour, phd

Dr. Praise Iyiewuare graduated from the University of Vermont with a Doctor of Philosophy in Clinical Psychology. Before graduating, she was a pre-doctoral intern with the University of Pennsylvania Health System. While a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Kentucky, Dr. Iyiewuare is the Expansion Principal Investigator for the Assisted Reproductive Technologies (A.R.T.) for Hope Study. She is also the 2024 recipient of the Francis C. Sumner Excellence Award for the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies conference.

Mentor: Julia Bursten, PhD

Dr. Gregory Rogel graduated from Michigan State University with a Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy. During his doctoral program, his areas of concentration were feminist bioethics, decolonial feminism, and interdisciplinary studies. As a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Kentucky, Dr. Rogel’s research focuses on health equity among marginalized communities and how social determinants may influence discrepancies.

Mentor: Aria Halliday, PhD

Dr. Shawna Shipley-Gates (she/her) is a certified health educator, digital erotic cultural producer, and Black feminist scholar whose research places eroticism in conversation with Black feminism, critical health psychology, and digital humanities. As a Lyman T. Johnson Postdoctoral fellow under the mentorship of Dr. Aria Halliday, I plan to contribute to the emerging yet limited research that focuses solely on Black feminist digital erotic cultural production as an innovative and culturally cognizant approach to addressing the sexual health disparities among Black girls and women. Specifically, I will curate a digital storytelling project–titled Black gURL Erotic– to produce alternative erotic narratives that present not only UK Black college women but all Black women as diverse, provocative, and healthy subjects.

Mentors: Sarah LaCour, PhD and Gregory Vincent, JD

Dr. LeAnna T. Luney will join the University of Kentucky under the mentorship of Dr. Sarah LaCour and Dr. Gregory Vincent. Her postdoctoral position as a Lyman T. Johnson fellow will contribute to scholarship produced in the College of Education's Civil Rights Initiative.

Luney will continue her research on how Black womxn and femme student organizers cope and care for themselves at predominantly white universities. Her work will provide an intersectional intervention to scholarship on African Americans in higher education within unique sociopolitical contexts (e.g., the University of Kentucky's history as a land grant institution and Kentucky’s Black Lives Matter activism). She hopes to advance research in which policymakers create systemic change and educational resources that center the demands of Black womxn and femme undergraduate student organizers to improve diverse gendered experiences in academia.

Mentors: Fatima Espinoza Vásquez, PhD and Gia Mudd-Martin, PhD, MPH, RN, FAHA

Dr. Aurora Santiago Ortiz is a social justice educator and scholar, lawyer, and filmmaker. Her work focuses on antiracist feminist, anti-colonial, and participatory research methodologies and popular education projects. As a Lyman T. Johnson Fellow, Santiago Ortiz will be working with Dr. Fatima Espinoza and Dr. Gia Mudd-Martin on the development of a sociotechnical infrastructure that improves health outcomes and facilitates the sharing of information during crisis for Latinx communities through a social justice, participatory research framework. She will also focus on preparing her book manuscript, Circuits of Self-Determination: Solidarity as Decolonial Praxis, for publication.